Meteorologist Dan Satterfield reviews Language Intelligence at his AGU blog:

If you are in any way involved in communication, especially science communication, this book is a must read. Rarely do I finish a book and like it so much, that I reread it almost immediately. I did this one.

Everyone can become a more memorable and effective speaker because there is really just one big secret to being a memorable speaker — knowing how and when to use the figures of speech, especially metaphor, antithesis, and the various types of repetition.

Of course a great speaker like Bill Clinton is a master of the figures. In his 1996 acceptance speech, he created an optimistic metaphor for his second term: “We need to build a bridge to the future….  So tonight let us resolve to build that bridge to the twenty-first century.” He repeated the bridge metaphor in various forms two dozen times.

In his Wednesday night speech for Obama, widely considered the best speech of both conventions, Clinton repeated the word “arithmetic” six times to drive home his point that the Republican budget doesn’t add up. He had lines like:

I want to nominate a man who’s cool on the outside but who burns for America on the inside.

This is antithesis—placing words or ideas in contrast or opposition. It was one of Lincoln’s favorite figures, in unforgettable lines such as “the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here” and “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Probably 90% of the lines in books of famous quotations make use of one or more of the figures. The two biggest sources of famous quotes –  the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare — were written by Elizabethans who learned more than 200 figures of speech in school. They called it “grammar school” for a reason. You learned Latin grammar to read Latin writers like Cicero and Virgil, especially to learn what they knew about the figures.

Research by social scientists and Madison Avenue has shown that the figures are indeed the key to being memorable and persuasive, as I discuss in my book, Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln and Lady Gaga. That’s why a major study of print ads found that three-fourths of ad headlines use figures of speech.

Obama’s most memorable speech was his keynote at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. It was a textbook in rhetoric:

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by John Farrell, via Renewable Energy World

Back in April, President Obama signed the JOBS Act and one of the most-heralded elements was so-called crowdfunding. The law sought to solve a major problem: it’s hard to finance small-scale business ventures.  Wall Street only cares about multi-million dollar plays and securities regulations make small-dollar projects rather difficult (and costly) to jointly fund.

The Act could have big implications for community-based renewable energy projects.

Right now, there are two kinds of community-based renewable energy projects, the charitable or the persistent.  Solar Mosaic, for example, was founded and funded on the concept that many environmentally-motivated people would help finance local solar projects with 0% interest loans.  They succeeded in building several projects, but the model is constrained by the limited universe of people who have money at hand and are willing to let it be used for no reward.

The other kind of renewable energy project allows participants to get some kind of financial reward through sheer persistence, overcoming enormous regulatory and legal barriers to success (some of which I covered in this 2007 report).  It means finding a complex legal structure to capture federal tax credits despite needing investors with “passive tax liability” or sacrificing federal incentives for simple ownership structures like cooperatives or municipal utilities.  It means having “accredited” (rich) investors or only soliciting investors through personal relationships.  This community wind project is an illustration, as are several solar projects in this report.

The JOBS Act may finally allow thousands of regular folks to make a modest return (5-10%) by investing in local renewable energy projects.  The Act allows for crowdfunding under the following circumstances:

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by Kelly Levin, via WRI’s Insights

Over the past several months, extreme weather and climate events in the form of heat waves, droughts, fires, and flooding have seemed to become the norm rather than the exception. In the past half-year alone, millions of people have been affected across the globe – from Europe suffering from the worst cold snap in a quarter century; to extreme flooding in Australia, Brazil, China, and the Philippines; to drought in the Sahel. Records have been broken monthly in the continental United States, with the warmest spring and 12-month period experienced this year and severe fires and drought affecting large swaths of the country.

So how bad has it really been? Below we have put together a timeline of extreme climate and weather events in 2012. We have by no means attempted to be comprehensive in listing events, but have aimed to include some of the most significant occurrences this year. Please let us know through the comment section if we are missing some, as we plan to update the timeline periodically.

The Climate Change Connection

Many people are asking whether climate change can explain the recent spate of extreme events. While we have not performed analysis connecting any of these events to climate change, many of these occurrences are in line with what scientists have predicted in a warmer world. Plus, the science of attributing extreme events to human-induced warming has improved significantly. We document this evolving science on the timeline as well.

It’s too early to tell how the rest of the year will take shape, and it’s true that every year is marked by floods, droughts, heat waves, and other extreme events. However, these past months are unusual in that numerous records have been broken around the world.

What we do know is that many extreme events will increase in severity and intensity if we continue on our carbon-intensive pathway. While it’s too late to reverse the course of past extreme events, there is much we can do – and must do – if we are to stop fueling the intensity and severity of our changing climate.

Kelly Levin is a senior associate with WRI’s major emerging economies objective. This timeline was created with assistance from Hilary Ross, WRI’s Communications Coordinator.

ThinkGeoEnergy, via Flickr

by Leslie Blodgett, via Renewable Energy World

When Jaime Merriman visited Kenya, she saw giraffes, but she was not on a wildlife tour. Merriman’s close encounter happened at Kenya’s geothermal facilities, where the striking animals were completely undisturbed as they grazed.